That’s probably true to a great extent.
Perhaps you’ve not met any personally, but there are those who left for that very reason. Some of the stories, though, are interesting.
For example, there are those whom I call “disgruntled Latins” who “went East” (both to the EC and the EO) in the vain hope of finding what they lost. By and large, they made a big mistake; the vast majority of them realized that and have drifted back to the West. (The number of those who drifted back spiked with the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum.)
Another example is those who sought out the Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians. Those people seem to have adjusted better to their new home than those in the first example, but one look at the state of the Anglican Communion these days clearly says they are not without their own troubles.
Then there are those on the extreme right who joined up with Fr DePauw and the CTM and other such groups. Those form the nucleus of the SSPV, SSGG, and the myriad and sundry “independent” churches which crop-up regularly.
Those who followed the SSPX are perhaps a little different, at least insofar as the SSPX was initially an Institute in good standing, and may well be again.
I do not disagree with your analysis of where some went. But let’s look at it another way: there are some 60,000,000 + Catholics in the US. Out of that, a charitible number would be 30% (the numbers vary - but I am averaging) attending Mass on a weekly basis. That means that we have 42,000,000 Catholics who go less frequently (once or twice a month maybe), what we call the CE’s (Christmas and Easter), the BFWD (bred, fed, wed, dead) group, and then the rest - those who have left for non-Roman rites, Protestant rites, other (LDS, eastern religions), and finally, nothing at all. I do not disagree that some have left as you suggest, but that group is in the thousands, not the millions. Again, the point I was trying to make is that there is at least an implied statement concerning the change in the Mass that this caused a huge (ok, I was going to say a mass) exodus
D). But the statistics of attendance simply don’t show any sharp drop, but rather a continuing gradual erosion. And logically if one understands the Eucharist (and I would presume that those trained in religion prior to Vatican 2 had a clearer understanding of it) would simply drop out because of the changes. Yes, some would seek other avenues, but as to the overall drop in attendance, it is not due to the changes, but rather to other sources and issues.
True, but can one say for sure that it wasn’t deliberately put there and flushed?
Ithink that one can say for sure that it was deliberate. I don’t think it was deliberate on the part of the bishops, but those who wrote the new catechisms definitely went at it that doctrine was passe and the social Gospel was the rule. But what they gave as the social Gospel was far too long on the social and far too short on the Gospel. The bishops were snoozing. They did not take personal oversite, and what little oversite they gave was not intelligently applied.
We sometimes presume an expertise, or a knowledge base that doesn’t exist in others. Let me give an exmple: several of us from my parish joined with others from 2 other parishes to bring in a national Apologetics speaker. During the session, I was standing in the back with the pastor of another parish; he had been ordained pre-Vatican 2 and seemed fairly level-headed. As questions were being asked of the apologist, he turned to me with a rather puzzeled look, and said “I had no idea these people didn’t know the answers to these questions.” He presumed that people were far better catechized than they were. He simply had no idea that people’s understanding of their faith was as poor as it is.
I think we sometimes presume too much when we critique the actions (or lack of them) of certain individuals. Bishops included. I do not intend to give them all a free pass; but neither do I presume bad intent by all of them.
